I'll Walk
by ILoVeWicked
Summary: Warner learns that love stories aren't all the same. Sometimes, it takes something so horrible, so earth-shattering, to really make his love story special. Song-fic to Bucky Covington's "I'll Walk". My first song-fic! Read and review!


**I'll Walk**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Legally Blonde the Musical or the song "I'll Walk".**

**Hey guys! Hope everyone had a happy Turkey day. So I have some amazing news for those of you who don't know about it already (I'm always the last one to get the news about things). Richard Blake is playing Fiyero in the National Tour of Wicked!! I almost died when I saw his picture on the Wicked site, and then I scared the crap out of my sister by dancing around my house going, "Guess who's playing Fiyero!?" in a high pitched, very out of tune voice! Gah, that man makes me smile like a goon :)**

**In other news, here's another one-shot for you guys. (Yeah, I have way too much free time on my hands...) I've never done a song-fic before, so I hope it's not entirely horrible. The story is based on Bucky Covington's "I'll Walk", and in honor of Richie Blake playing my second favorite Broadway male hero Fiyero (next to Emmett of course), I wrote it in Warner's point of view! I dunno...Brooke and Warner totally click for me. Review and let me know what you think!**

**-ILoVeWicked**

_We were eighteen, it was prom night._

_We had our first big fight._

"Brooke, I'm telling you, it meant _nothing_!"

"Oh, so you mean to tell me that you standing by the punch bowl with that brainless, snooty redhead, clearly flirting with her, meant _nothing_? Are you serious?" Brooke screamed back at me.

We had left the prom early, because apparently I was flirting with Nikki. That girl was such an airhead and thought she was so above everyone else it made me sick. I wouldn't even waste my time flirting with someone like her. Brooke and I had been dating since the eighth grade, I think it was a little late for trust and cheating issues, if you ask me.

Honestly, I was angry at my girlfriend. The money I had spent on the rental limousine, the corsage, the tuxedo, it all went to waste. We were only at the prom for a half an hour before the punch bowl incident occurred, and Brooke had dragged me away from my friends, embarrassing me in the process, and demanded I take her home. And the whole way home, all we were doing was fighting over Nikki.

"Brooke, I would never, ever cheat on you," I told her, trying to stay calm as my hands tensed up on the steering wheel. Brooke rolled her eyes.

"You're only saying that because you have to. I bet that if I had left myself, you'd be all over that girl."

"Nikki," I corrected her. Brooke's eyebrows rose.

"Oh, so she has a name? And you know it, too. My, we're getting awfully protective over _Nikki_, aren't we?"

Finally, I lost it. I removed one of my hands from the steering wheel and turned to look at her, my face burning with rage.

"_I'm _not the one being overly-protective, here, Brooke! _You're_ the one who's being overly-protective and very clingy! I am not your property, and you can't control me, okay? Maybe, once in a while, I get a little bored of five years of you and only you, and for once, I'd like to check out my other options! And why are you so jealous of _Nikki _anyway? Is it because she's more popular? More attractive? More everything that you're not? That's what you're always saying! I just don't get it, because if I wanted to go out with Nikki, believe me, Brooke, I'd be long gone by now!"

She didn't say anything sarcastic, or shoot back at me with anything else to keep her argument strong after that. She just looked at me, tight-lipped with tears of mascara falling from her beautiful blue eyes.

_She said, "Pull this car over."_

_I did and then I told her, "I don't know what you are crying for."_

_I grabbed her hand as she reached for the door._

"Just… pull this car over," Brooke whispered, her face pressed against the passenger's seat window after some time of silence. The silent tears that were now free falling into her lap were making it even more unbearable to be in the car with her.

I shook my head after I obeyed, pulling over at the intersection of Pine Street and Audubon Road, never keeping my gaze out the windshield from faltering. "I don't know what you're crying for," I told her icily. I could hear Brooke's tiny sniffle as she grabbed her jacket and her purse and scooted towards the door.

As she reached for the door handle, I took her cold, wet, hand and placed it firmly in my own. Brooke looked at me and whispered some of the saddest words I had ever heard.

_She said, "I'll walk._

_Let go of my hand. _

_Right now I'm hurt, and you don't understand._

_So just be quiet, and later we will talk._

_Just leave, don't worry._

_I'll walk."_

And with those words, she left. And I regretted telling her that all those things I had said Nikki possessed more than my girlfriend did were just the things _she _thoughtNikki had more of. I yearned to tell her that I didn't mean any of those things I had said. I wanted to add to my outburst to her that it was _Brooke_ who was the more popular, more beautiful, more everything that _Nikki_ wasn't in my eyes, and that I loved her more than anything.

But it was too late for that. She had left, and I was just the jerk in the limousine.

_It was a dark night, a black dress._

_The driver never saw her around the bend._

_I never will forget the call, or driving to the hospital. _

_When they told me her legs still wouldn't move._

"Mr. Huntington? This is Shelley from Los Angeles Memorial Hospital. I'm sorry to let you know that Miss Brooke Wyndham was hit by a car earlier tonight while walking on the intersection of Pine and Audubon. We had strict orders from Miss Wyndham's to contact you immediately."

I sucked in a breath at the message Shelley had left for me on my phone. Brooke? Hit by a car? Tonight? It couldn't be true…I didn't want it to be true. But she was still alive, and that was all I needed to hear to make me feel at least a little better about the situation.

To my surprise, the message wasn't over. I continued listening to Shelley's soothing voice as I got back into my rental limo, still clad in my tuxedo, which had been wrinkled from me lying in a ball on my bed for three hours.

"For the most part, she's doing okay. Her vitals are stable and she's awake and fully aware of what is going on. But…uh…how do I put this…?"

For the most part? How do you put it? I thought she was okay. The seconds ticked by until the woman on the phone continued. Shelley needed to just 'put it' already and get me out of my misery.

"We tried everything, but her legs still wouldn't move. I'm afraid she's paralyzed from the waist down. I'm sorry, Mr. Huntington."

Shelley didn't say anything more. She just hung up.

I was normally a strong man. I didn't cry for too many things. When my Grandma Bootsie almost died of a heart attack, I stayed together. When my parents got divorced, I didn't shed a tear. And when I broke my leg when I was six, not a thing came out of my mouth.

But when I thought about Brooke, my Brooke, paralyzed and forced to a wheelchair because of me, all eighteen years I had stayed strong came bursting out of my eyes, and I was bawling uncontrollably like a four year old that missed an episode of Barney.

_I cried when I walked into her room._

Eventually, I pulled myself back together while sitting in the parking lot of the vacant hospital and made my way slowly, numbly to the Intensive Care Unit and into Brooke's room.

I had planned to keep my cool in front of her, just ask her my million questions and apologize to her to no end, no crying involved.

But when I saw her, bruised, blistered, scratched, and her legs unmoving, I broke down yet again. At first, she didn't say anything to me, but when I looked through my teary eyes, I saw that she was crying too. Mutely, she extended her arm in my direction and whispered the hardest thing she had ever had to say.

_She said "I'll walk._

_Please come and hold my hand._

_Right now I'm hurt, and I don't understand._

_Let's just be quiet, and later we can talk._

_Just stay, don't worry._

_I'll walk."_

I climbed up into her hospital bed beside her, careful not to squish any of her wires or her IV. Slowly, I wrapped my hand across her small, frail body, and in her ear, I whispered, "I'm sorry."

_I held her hand through everything._

_The weeks and months of therapy._

"I've got you," I assured her with a squeeze of her hand as Brooke's therapist instructed her to do a routine stretch. I'm not going to lie, it was painful watching her struggle to move her leg, but I knew my presence was making her feel better. Her pain mattered more than mine did at the moment.

I watched in agony as she winced in pain. I was ready to smack that therapist in the face for causing her even the slightest amount of hurt. I sent him a glare and looked down at Brooke, who was gripping onto my hand tighter than I had ever felt her hold onto me in the past few months.

"Are you okay?" I asked softly. Brooke nodded, a small smile on her face.

"Yeah, I can't feel it, so it's okay," Brooke lied.

Even though she couldn't feel it physically, I knew she was feeling it emotionally. I pulled her head to rest against my chest and kissed the top of her head. It was my own little way of letting her know that everything was going to be okay.

_I held her hand and asked her_

_To be my bride._

Three years since the accident, Brooke and I stood—or sat in Brooke's case—on the end of the pier by the boardwalk, watching the sun set.

"It's so beautiful," Brooke whispered in awe, her eyes lighting up brighter than the sun itself. I turned slightly to get a good look at her, the sun highlighting all of her flawless features, and I smiled the same old, love struck smile I always make when I look at her.

"_You're _beautiful," I told her. Brooke looked up at me and smileed, and I figured that the moment was the perfect time to get down on my one knee. Shock washed over Brooke's face as I took her hand, pulled the diamond ring from my pocket and ask her to marry me.

Without missing a beat, Brooke wheeled around to face me in one swift movement (she had gotten good at working the chair over the years) and she screamed, "Yes!"

I placed the ring on her slender finger and leaned forward, still on my knees, to kiss her. Brooke smiled into the kiss and pulled me closer to her. And when we broke apart, as if we could read each others' minds, we both whispered, "I love you."

_She's dreamed from a little girl, to have her daddy walk her down the aisle._

_So from her wheelchair, she looks up at him and smiles._

Glen Wyndham, Brooke's father, hated me. It was because of what I did to his daughter, putting her in this situation. Susan, Brooke's mother, was more forgiving of me and was fully involved in our engagement, whereas Glen would just stand there and glare at me for hours on end. I remember the good old days when he used to _enjoy _my company. Brooke had tried countless times to assure her father that the accident wasn't my entire fault, but Glen wouldn't hear any of it. Brooke was his only child, and I could understand where he was coming from. He just wanted to protect his baby.

Brooke had dreamed of her thirty seconds of fame as she walked down that aisle for as long as I can remember, and now, because of my stupid mouth, her dream couldn't ever be as magical as she had always longed for it to be.

But Brooke denied that I ruined anything about her dream.

"If anything, the experience will be even more magical with the wheelchair," she told me sincerely. And the next day, she came wheeling up to me as swiftly as she could, shaking her head. "You know what? No! I don't even think I'll use the wheelchair! I'm going to _walk_ down the aisle on our wedding day!"

Susan cupped her hand over her mouth, keeping the animal-like cries from escaping her mouth at her daughter's excitement. Glen, who had been standing by silently, made his way over to Brooke's side and knelt down to be eye level with her.

"Sweetie, how are you…you aren't able to…you are…" But he couldn't bring himself to say paralyzed, crippled, in a wheelchair. Brooke just looked up at him, smiled and said to him:

"_I'll walk._

_Please hold my hand_

_I know that this will hurt._

_I know you understand. _

_Please, Daddy, don't cry. _

_This is already hard._

_Let's go, don't worry._

_I'll walk."_


End file.
